Jonathan’s unpaid debts

A promise made is a debt unpaid” is a saying President Goodluck Jonathan and his promoters may not quite understand. This must explain the loud and noisy promotion of promises said to have been kept by Jonathan. A four-page newspaper advertisement with the heading “PROMISES KEPT” said: “I, President Goodluck Jonathan, made 10 major pledges to the people of Nigeria at my inaugural address on May 29, 2011.” Jonathan continued: “I have kept my promises as you will see from these statistics.”

This boast was followed by a list of 10 pledges. According to another boast, “These are facts and statistics that are true and verifiable. A lot of them have local and international third party validation.”

“PLEDGE NO. 1”: “I pledged to grow the economy and to create jobs.” Anyone doubting Jonathan’s achievement concerning this should consider Nigeria’s scandalous third position among the top five countries with the largest number of the poor. The ranking was supplied by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim at an official forum.

”PLEDGE NO. 5″: “I pledged to place the power sector reform at the heart of Nigeria’s industrialisation strategy and to continue to fight for electricity to be available to all our citizens.” Jonathan claims he has kept this particular promise, which means he must be blind to the pervasive darkness in the land. However, to be fair, Jonathan only said he would “continue to fight for electricity to be available”, meaning it could be argued that he is still fighting to get that done.

”PLEDGE NO. 10″: “I pledged that the fight against corruption would be a war in which we all must enlist so that the limited resources of this nation are used for the growth of our common wealth.” Clearly, this is a pledge with zero content; and a content analysis should show why the Jonathan administration’s anti-corruption war remains in the realm of fantasy. Jonathan added: “Today, my administration’s preferred approach to corruption has been to plug the loopholes and tackle it from its root.”

Evidence of Jonathan’s success in this regard must be Nigeria’s ranking on Transparency International (TI) 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) . The assessment was based on the presumed extent of public sector corruption in the countries. Nigeria scored 27 out of a maximum 100 marks and was listed as the 39th most corrupt nation in the world.

Particularly applicable to the country is the TI observation: “A poor score is likely a sign of widespread bribery, lack of punishment for corruption and public institutions that don’t respond to citizens’ needs.” TI Chairman, José Ugaz, said: “The 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that economic growth is undermined and efforts to stop corruption fade when leaders and high level officials abuse power to appropriate public funds for personal gain.”

Judging by the conflicting picture of promises not kept, perhaps a more appropriate heading for Jonathan’s claims is “UNPAID DEBTS”